Sydney

A lot has been happening with Sydney lately and I realized I haven't mentioned most of it here, so I thought it was a good time for a Sydney update!

First of all, we are fairly certain she has a speech delay. We were told by the MIND Institute that our kids would have about a 50% chance of speech delay since Jacob has autism, so it's not too surprising. What they are finding is that most siblings who do have speech delays are caught up by the time they start school (with the proper treatment).

So, I have already contacted our Early Interventionist at ALTA and requested an evaluation for her. Sometime soon they'll be sending someone out to test her and we'll see how it goes.

I'm not as worried about her lack of expressive language (what she says) but more about the receptive end of things...she seems to understand much less of what we say than she should. You can't say "Where's Daddy?" and have her look towards him, or "Give me your ball!" and have her hand it to you. She just looks at you like she knows you want something but she has no idea what. If I say, "Time for your bath!!" she doesn't grin or go running towards the bathroom, and it's one of her FAVORITE things.

Now that I have commited to an evaluation, I am taking language work more seriously with her and am already seeing some results, which is promising. M&M reinforcers seem to be helping! Last night I put her in the bath and, as usual, worked on the word "Bath." For the first time, she said back, "Bah!" I hooted and hoorayed and threw her in the air and let her know how wonderful it was...and then she said it again with a smirk on her face. Ha! She has a sense of humor. ;)

Also on the list of concerns is that she has some major sensory issues I am hoping are just a phase. They do seem extreme though. She has become extremly picky about food, and she's also starting to complain about long sleeves and pants. She'll try to pull her pant legs up and will scream with frustration when she can't take them off. She pulls her socks off as soon as you put them on, unless you put shoes on and go outside. I know that it is common to be picky about food at her age (19 months) I am finding it very hard to get her to eat almost anything outside of a certain range of foods. This is making me a little worried, and it's something they'll look at when they come to do her evaluation.

The next thing is that I am trying again with sleep training for her. She has been sick off and on a lot and that kind of derailed things...but I am dying here from lack of sleep and so we started again yesterday. She cried for over an hour when I put her to bed last night...I was checking in at increasing intervals. And it wasn't an angry cry this time, it was that oh-so-sad, nobody-loves-me cry. If I wasn't busy with Jacob and Natalie I don't know if I could have stuck it out!

But then she didn't cry ALL NIGHT!!! I don't know if she was exhausted from crying to sleep and so she actually slept through the night, or if she woke up a few times and just got herself back to sleep. Either way...I didn't hear from her again until about 7 this morning. How happy do you think I am about that??!

One final thing I have to mention...she is getting quite a repertoire of songs that she will do the signs for. She is only starting to pick up signs for meaningful language, but for music she is much more motivated. She'll do the full version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or Itsy Bitsy Spider. She tries Wheels on the Bus (love how she tries to do "round and round") and she points to her cheeks ("and your face will surely show it") when we sing If You're Happy and You Know It. She is still doing her little hula dance when music comes on the television - Chris and I just love this. It is ADORABLE.